In constructing a building such as a house, it is common that openings for receiving doors and windows are first roughly framed in with wall studs, which are usually made of wood. Subsequently, the rough framed openings are finished with a wooden door or window jamb assembly, which often is milled with an integral brickmold that abuts the brick or siding on the outside of the building. In door jamb assemblies in particular, a peripheral lip or stop usually is milled into the wood of the jamb extending around the inner periphery thereof. In use, a closed door mounted to the jamb assembly rests against the stop. In many instances, the stop bears a weather strip that bears against the closed door to seal against drafts.
The traditional method of fabricating a door jamb and brickmold assembly is to mill the peripheral frame members of the assembly from larger pieces of a high quality clear wood. In this process, a relatively thick wide piece of wood is passed through a milling machine and unwanted portions are cut or milled away and discarded as sawdust. Obviously, this process is wasteful, and is becoming more and more expensive in light of the ever increasing costs of lumber. In some instances, the entire cross section of each frame member, including the brickmold, is milled as a unitary piece from a wide thick piece of lumber. In other instances, the frame members are milled in two pieces that fit together to define the finished shape. The inner peripheral frame members may also be milled from relatively thin pieces of wood to define the door stop and the brickmold may be fixed along the outer edges of the inner frame members to define the finished shape. In either case, significant amounts of expensive lumber is required as is time consuming, expensive, and wasteful machining steps. All of this adds to the final cost of traditional door jamb and brickmold assemblies.
Door and window jamb assemblies have been developed that are wholly or partially comprised of extruded thermoplastic portions. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,030,830 to Sailor teaches a jamb for mounting a window or door in an opening of an existing structure. The jamb includes an extruded plastic or metal outer frame comprising the stop, a wooden inner frame, or jamb, for support of the extruded outer frame, fasteners for attaching the outer frame at the window or door opening, and a molded cover that secures to the outer frame and conceals the fasteners attaching the frame to the structure. In Sailor, the portion of the plastic outer frame forming the stop and the brickmold are hollow and thus may not provide sufficient strength to the frame. The hollow nature of the brickmold makes it unsuitable for receiving standard nails that hold the assembly to the framing. Non-carpentry standard fastening means are thus employed, which is distasteful to carpenters. In addition, this jamb assembly requires the use of an auxiliary cover to conceal the fasteners attaching the frame to the building structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,323 to Gerritsen teaches a jamb cladding and brickmold assembly that provides a plastic member that either wraps around a wooden jamb with stop or that wraps around a wooden jamb and provides its own plastic stop. An attachable brickmold is also included. This assembly, like that taught by Sailor, has hollow portions unsuitable for holding nails and liable to be punctured or otherwise deformed by heavy use or forcible contact. U.S. Pat. No. 5,182,880 to Berge, Jr. et al., teaches a cladding and brickmold apparatus similar to that taught by Gerritsen in that it wraps around a combination wooden jamb and stop. Thus, this device requires the use of a wooden jamb with stop and requires that the wood be milled to form the stop, an expensive, time consuming and detailed operation. The prior art does not teach a unitary stop and brickmold assembly made of solid thermoplastic material.